James Baldwin Was Not Your Figurehead

Andrea Long Chu has published a takedown of Thomas Chatterton Williams. Though it’s pegged as a review of a recent book of his, I find it highly reminiscent of her recent anti-Pamela Paul piece in that I have to believe both were written in like 2022 and fished out of the old Dropbox as a classic “it’s summer and too hot to write” work-avoidance tactic. I respect the hustle, but not the result, especially because this new missive commits one of the most cliched and tiresome acts in liberal journaling: attempting to shanghai James Baldwin into the contemporary social justice movement, which he would have hated. Chu’s invocation of Baldwin is fairly anodyne, and I don’t particularly hold it against her. But I was TRIGGERED by it, and it inspired me to make a case that I’ve thought about making for years: James Baldwin wasn’t woke. I hate to use the term, I know we’re all sick of it, but I can’t think of a simpler or more direct way to say it. I’m thrilled Baldwin has gotten his flowers lately, but that has come packaged with a reductive view of his values that would have left him aghast.